Just had a failure today of my rear rim similar to the one above. One spot looks like the above picture and another that looks a bit worse with more chipping. I was running a 2.5 Maxxis Mobster DH (dual ply!!) tubeless with around 30 psi. Hit a square edge rock pretty hard on a downhill on my Chilcotin. I only built these up at the beginning of July and have about two dozen rides in on them. Gotta say I'm a little disappointed that they didn't hold up longer.

Just had a failure today of my rear rim similar to the one above. One spot looks like the above picture and another that looks a bit worse with more chipping. I was running a 2.5 Maxxis Mobster DH (dual ply!!) tubeless with around 30 psi. Hit a square edge rock pretty hard on a downhill on my Chilcotin. I only built these up at the beginning of July and have about two dozen rides in on them. Gotta say I'm a little disappointed that they didn't hold up longer.

I wonder how other carbon rims would have handled the hit. Would Enve's have shrugged it off? I think an aluminum rim would have dented, though a crescent wrench would have mostly fixed it. I have 2 sets of Nancy rims... these pics make me nervous

I had a nearly identical crack in mine after a similar incident. I refilled the tire and finished the race I was in with the cracked rim. They sent me a free rim, only had to pay the shipping. So no complaints here. Since the racing season was still in full swing, I did not have time to rebuild the wheel. I sealed the crack with 5min epoxy, reinstalled the tire and put another 400 miles on it with no issues.

Well considering that an aluminum DownHill rim would weigh about twice as much and probably still would have dented, I am not too worried.

That point of view is logical if approaching this discussion as a pissing content.

But if using this discussion to determine what these rims are capable of, status reports like this are incredibly valuable. We need to know if people have had rim failures, and if so, what caused the failures. I appreciate being able to come to this thread and read about how these rims perform in a variety of scenarios.

Took the steps documented by BY a couple pages back on fixing cracked rims. Only have a couple of rides on it but happy with the results thus far. Who knows how long it will last but worth a try.26in chinese carbon all mountain rim

Here is a link and a pic of the fix. If this works for the long term, I will have to buy Bortis a beer or two...

The original patch we did has been holding together well (the epoxy) but the invisible damage was greater than we thought and the cracking has propagated almost to the spoke bed. I am going to continue to ride it but I am also going to start the warranty process if I can.

Well dfiler, that might be true in some circumstances, but this is in a 29er equipment thread and it wasn't even a 29er rim since almost no downhillers use 29er wheels. After reading this entire thread it looks like the failure modes are: 1.too much air pressure, 2.hitting somewhat sharp rocks at decent speed (I think there were 4 or 5 of those) 3.quality control issues with the drilling that caused delamination. I think there were 2 of those. 4.early problems with bead seats that seem not to have occured since around July.

So my point is that for most normal usage these rims are turning out to be pretty good quality especially considering the price. I am not saying that we don't want reports of these type of failures, just commenting that these are not going to come into play for most. I have one that I have been beating on for around 200 miles now and have had zero issues so I am ordering 3 more. Also, I have noticed over time that the weights seem to be coming down to around 380-390 and getting more consistent.

These rims are very close the Flow's in that the inner lip of the bead seat is 23 on these and 22.6 on Flows but even with a Bontrager rim strip these rims are about 100 grams less per wheel. The new Flow EX will be wider at the lip but also about 25 grams heavier than the old Flows. A Flow would be that rim that had this not been available would be the most likely to replace in the application that the failure occurred. Pointing out that it might also have been damaged is not illogical. I am not easy on rims, I have bent a Crest and blown a tire completely off a Stan's rim on both sides at once with the rim in the middle of the tire by hitting a solid rock berm going faster than I should have been. Both instances were pilot error.

In the UK, I will find it impossible to sell a second hand pair of chinese wheels in 24 months, whereas the Enve set will probably fetch £500-650. Based on my simple maths, its a break even scenario so I went for the Enve wheeset.

The failure reports have increased my confidence in these rims over time. The trend here seems to be that they are at or below the failure rate of 'comparable' carbon rims. I am of course not referring to Enve as they seem faultless, price aside. I have read more than one person here say that they do not seem quite as stiff as Enve, but very close. I would likely never notice a difference like that and would easily brush aside given the price difference.

I plan on finally putting my order in this week after months of keeping up with this thread. I will of course report on it when I have enough info worth giving.

In the UK, I will find it impossible to sell a second hand pair of chinese wheels in 24 months, whereas the Enve set will probably fetch £500-650. Based on my simple maths, its a break even scenario so I went for the Enve wheeset.

Good logic here, although you may not have to go the ENVE route. The Reynolds rims are quite good at about 2/3 the price of ENVE, and good warranty, etc.. Much better route than the chinese "experimental" rims, imho.

Good logic here, although you may not have to go the ENVE route. The Reynolds rims are quite good at about 2/3 the price of ENVE, and good warranty, etc.. Much better route than the chinese "experimental" rims, imho.

Yes I would have gone down the Reynolds route (had no intention of buying into Enve) but it was a bargain hence why I went for it.

They arrived yesterday and true to the sellers word, they are brand new and im delighted.

Good logic here, although you may not have to go the ENVE route. The Reynolds rims are quite good at about 2/3 the price of ENVE, and good warranty, etc.. Much better route than the chinese "experimental" rims, imho.

Not to pick on you personally, but posts like this bring up an interesting facet of this discussion.

The thread title is indicative of a cultural bias that is likely present in many people, whether they know it or not. We tend to lump all "Chinese" products together, with little acknowledgement that there are specific and named companies selling these products. We do the same with the"Chinese" language, completely ignoring that there is really not any such thing. There are multiple languages, only some of which are fairly similar.

At least here in the states, just the mention of China or Chinese seems to be rather galvanizing. Many people have a rather irrational hatred for China and use "Chinese" as an insult when describing things. It's almost like the fact that something is Chinese becomes the only distinguishing characteristic once it is noted at all. This is despite the fact that a good percentage of everything we buy is made in China. Yet we only say something is made in China when wanting to describe something negatively.

I find myself guilty of this at times. Somebody will ask what type of rims I have, and I'll say "cheap chinese carbon rims". This is pretty idiotic behavior on my part. I should really just tell them the name of the company that makes the rims. Do people riding Enve rims answser that question with "expensive american rims"?

I am now making a pact with myself to avoid this possibly racist tendency and from here forward, to answer the question with the actual name of the company, "light-bicycle" wider carbon rims.

Would it be possible to change the thread title to actually indicate the company and product that we're talking about? This doesn't have to be like decades past where mainstream American culture didn't even bother learning the names of minorities and instead just used terms like "chinaman". Yeah, I'm pointing an accusational finger directly at us, the mountain biking community. We need to shape up and refer to Chinese products by their actual names, rather than just calling them "Chinese".

Whether you know it or not.

If you ride a carbon fiber frame, most likely it's made in China. I've purchased a couple of road frames and a 29er full suspension frame, 29er rims, bars and bottle cages from a couple of Chinese vendors. For the most part the process has been simple and the vendors have been responsive.

I will agree that the ENVE stuff is out of this world. My local wheelbuilder visited ENVE and raved about their engineers and testing. That said, I went to school and worked on several high energy physics experiments with Chinese students and PhDs. They were well trained and exceedingly hard working. I have no doubt that the Chinese carbon stuff is as good as 90% of what's out there, simply because it is 90% of what's out there.

Honestly, I doubt that any of us would like to have a large carbon fiber assembly plant in our neighborhood, nor would we want the jobs that go with that plant. The fact is that for labor intensive industries as well as those that create harmful byproducts we can't nor should we try to compete. Currently China leads the world in low wages and not giving a cr@p about the environment. I don't want to live in a country like that and China won't stay that way for long.

I pored over this thread and eventually decided to go the ENVE route. Sure, the LB rims are much less expensive, which was naturally temping, but the failures that I've seen here, the shabby drills holes - at least some of them -- and the questionable warranty policy of shipping cost and up-charges turned the tide.

If I didn't have the funds, I would go LB, but since I have the extra $1,000...If the EVNE AM rims are good as I hope, a set of XC will follow for my prodigious MX.

Not to pick on you personally, but posts like this bring up an interesting facet of this discussion.

The thread title is indicative of a cultural bias that is likely present in many people, whether they know it or not. We tend to lump all "Chinese" products together, with little acknowledgement that there are specific and named companies selling these products. We do the same with the"Chinese" language, completely ignoring that there is really not any such thing. There are multiple languages, only some of which are fairly similar.

At least here in the states, just the mention of China or Chinese seems to be rather galvanizing. Many people have a rather irrational hatred for China and use "Chinese" as an insult when describing things. It's almost like the fact that something is Chinese becomes the only distinguishing characteristic once it is noted at all. This is despite the fact that a good percentage of everything we buy is made in China. Yet we only say something is made in China when wanting to describe something negatively.

I find myself guilty of this at times. Somebody will ask what type of rims I have, and I'll say "cheap chinese carbon rims". This is pretty idiotic behavior on my part. I should really just tell them the name of the company that makes the rims. Do people riding Enve rims answser that question with "expensive american rims"?

I am now making a pact with myself to avoid this possibly racist tendency and from here forward, to answer the question with the actual name of the company, "light-bicycle" wider carbon rims.

Would it be possible to change the thread title to actually indicate the company and product that we're talking about? This doesn't have to be like decades past where mainstream American culture didn't even bother learning the names of minorities and instead just used terms like "chinaman". Yeah, I'm pointing an accusational finger directly at us, the mountain biking community. We need to shape up and refer to Chinese products by their actual names, rather than just calling them "Chinese".

totally agree with your view on this. my decision to not go with the LB wheels was solely based on the assumption that Enve / Reynolds wheels would have gone through a 'QC' process which is stricter than the LB wheels. The word to note is assumption and its ultimately down to a personal view/preference/cash!

I cant wait to go out for a ride now, so taken half days leave on friday.